“All politicians are con artists. Aren’t they?” I ask with rhetorical intent.
“I thought you said last week that all community college professors were con artists?” He offers me a meaningless laugh.
“I am talking about consequences here.”
“Hey, no disrespect, Bark, but I really don’t want to talk about politics right now. That’s all we ever talk about at home—about how to win. And that’s not why we’re here, is it?”
“What else is there? We all want to win.”
“Yup, we all want to win.”
“Nevertheless, first you have to listen.”
His sight levels with mine. “I’m here. Do you have the pills or not?”
At the water’s edge, Claire is being buried. The little sister dumps sand along her arms and legs, rivulets down her skin, golden tanned skin, none burned. Rough grains of sand mesh with the skin, alight, flecks of fire. Claire must be careful of the tide coming in, of the unexpected turns of the sea. Even now, its momentary glassiness is a false calm.
He looks to where I am looking, to my Claire. He is not allowed to look at her. Not allowed. Not. “I have to tell you something,” I say deliberately, wringing his focus back to me. “I have a gun.”
He does not respond. It is as if he is thinking or hesitating. Max Cooper has faltered before, on that last game penalty kick. I was there in the stands, observing the game, and he thought a second too long, and failed, a wide kick.
“Cool. A gun? Do you go out to the rifle range? I think it’s in Relville.”
I shake my head. I have no knowledge of a rifle range.
“My dad is a vet. He goes there sometimes. Always says he’ll bring me, but hasn’t yet.”
I wait for more. I want questions or curiosity. I want an eager mind. But he’s distracted by Claire, or by the sea, or by the failings of our fathers, or his father, a failure, or worse, a man of false promises. I am walking past him.
“Where are you going, Bark? I thought we were good.”
I do not understand. Good? Good requires evil. Good is not an abstract but specific actions. I dig my nails into my palms. The nails are long enough to cut the skin. Max Cooper is spinning a web of words, pale words. Nothing is “good” here.
Max
Saturday, 12:10 P.M.
We aren’t good.
From the front of the building drifts the whiff of hot dogs wallowing on the Snack Shack grill, a summer’s worth of fat and grease. One more shift, I think to myself. One more, and I am done. I’m never coming back. And this news about a gun. What’s with that? If Barkley wasn’t so harmless, I guess I’d think it’s strange that he’s telling me has a gun. But when he bought a new computer, he went on and on about it for two weeks as if no one else had ever bought a fully loaded gamer computer. I don’t want to even ask him about what kind. Maybe his family goes hunting. Or maybe his dad has time to bring him to the rifle range. A slight wind off the ocean rises but doesn’t break the heat. The waves are especially high and rough today. I should let him go. I should dive in, swim, and then finish the shift—and the summer.
“Come on, Bark,” I call out. He’s slouching down along the concrete wall to the men’s room. He’s fish-faced with pinched lips. He bulges out of his sweatshirt. He looks like he’s been packing away the doughnuts all summer. His shaved head is waxy-yellow. This morning, his face looks particularly bloated. The rolls on his neck are tattered with day-old beard. I feel like I’m seeing him for the first time close-up, though we’ve been working at the Snack Shack together all summer. If I didn’t know him, I’d be scared. But I kind of feel sorry for him. No one likes him. He doesn’t seem to have any real friends. Yet truth be told, all I want is to just buy the pills and get through my last shift. But Barkley is slower than Peter. Barkley is my parents’ nightmare, and maybe mine, too. Community college dropout, works part-time for the town, lives at home, spends all night eating junk food, on his new computer, or so he says.
He stops at the end of the wall and turns back to me. I can buy the pills and get out of here. “I’m worried about you,” he says.
“It’s not like I’m going to make this a regular thing.”
Barkley sweats. He looks like he’s been swimming. However, I don’t think he’s been near the ocean all summer. He strides back to me. “You know you grew this summer? How tall are you now, Cooper?”
“As tall as you, Bark.”
“That tall.” He says this blank and hard. I’ve had enough of him. “Bark, what do I owe you?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? Come on, Bark. I don’t need another favor.”
“Terrific,” he says. “Twenty bucks a pill.”
“Twenty?”
“Exactly.”
“That’s a lot of money,” I say, stating the obvious.
“Invite me to your party, and I’ll throw in two freebies.”
“What party?”
Waves crash. Kids squeal. A lifeguard’s whistle shrills. This is taking too long with Barkley, though, in a way, time feels like it has stopped. I am never leaving this men’s room door. “Give me two pills. That’s all I need,” I say, jamming all the money I have on me into his sweaty palm. Forty dollars. I just want the pills and want to get away from him. “You sure these are good?”
He glances down at my money, smoothes the bills out in his palms, counting one at a time as if he needs to check for counterfeits. “The party?” he says, with no emotion in his voice.
“I don’t think you’ll know many people if you come to any party of mine.”
Scanning the packed shoreline, I think of an old line, “It’s so crowded, no one goes here anymore.” However, there, along the edge of the dunes, with her little sister, is that girl from the Snack Shack line again.
Something about her. She has legs. I mean, she had legs yesterday, too. I don’t think anyone would ever call her fat, but she’s not one of those super-thin anorexic types. Curves, that’s it. She has curves and breasts she can’t hide even in a boring one-piece bathing suit.
“Is that girl coming?” he asks. He points out toward the girl with the curves and her little sister.
“What girl? There’s nothing but girls on the beach today. I don’t see which one you mean.”
Of all the girls in bikinis, clustered with their girlfriends, why is he picking out her? Strange that he’d pick her out of all the girls, all of them in bikinis, all of them clustered with their girlfriends, lying on their backs, glistening with sunscreen, all of them—except for Claire—in the barest of the bare, I shouldn’t even be thinking of this because I’m getting hard, a chronic condition of working at the beach. That’s the last thing I want Barkley to see. Yet even that girl is spreading lotion down her arms and across the top of her bathing suit, carefully, methodically. I bet she smells like coconut and the sea—and I just have to get away from Barkley. Go for a swim. Behind us, someone flushes a toilet with a roar. The sidewalk burns through my sneakers. “Just give me two pills, that’s all I need.”
Barkley’s fingering my two twenty-dollar bills, rubbing them against each other. I step toward him, close enough to smell a stomach-churning mix of eggs and sweat and disinfectant on him like he sprayed himself with Lysol instead of showering.
“So what do you plan to do with that gun?” I ask, wanting to avoid talking about the get-together.
“I’m awaiting orders,” he jokes.
“Cool,” I say because I just want to buy the stuff from him and go. He probably doesn’t even have one. I’ve heard him say he was on the varsity soccer team. No, he was the assistant manager to the team. If Barkley wants to say he has a gun to impress people, so be it. It doesn’t do anything for me.
“What about the party?” he asks, easing closer. “I heard it was tomorrow night.”
I shrug.
“Your annual end-of-summer birthday party?”
His eyes are even more than beady; they are dark-ringed like he hasn’t slept,
and darting left and right as if he can’t focus on any one thing for more than a second or two.
“Everyone’s talking about your party, Cooper.”
“Everybody?”
“Jackson.”
I did invite Jackson and the team.
“I think I’m the only one you’re not inviting, Cooper, and I’m helping you out here.”
“Just give me the stuff, Bark. Okay? If you want to come to the party, come to the party.”
“Stop calling me Bark.”
“Stop calling me Cooper.”
I don’t think I ever said to anyone to stop calling me “Cooper.” I say this right to his face. It feels good. “Got it, Bark-ley?” I pull his whole name out. I guess no more barking at him, either, though he doesn’t say that. I’m tired of that, it’s old, it feels like something a stupid kid does.
He doesn’t respond, but I’m not surprised. He didn’t respond to a lot of remarks this summer. He just tunes it all out. Now he won’t even look at me in the eye. With his dirty fingernails, he digs out two plastic bags. Inside one bag, two dozen or so pills lie pure white. They look like real pills. An X for some reason is handwritten on this plastic bag. He transfers four pills to the empty plastic bag, and I don’t say again that I only need two.
As if in response, my back arches and aches more. It takes all I have not to pop them immediately into my mouth, not to slide into nothingness right in front of him. Instead, I stuff the plastic bag into the side pocket of my backpack.
“We’re good, Barkley?” I say, stepping away from him. “We’re good. No worries.” I want to be able to keep buying from him. I just don’t want to be friends.
“We are good, Max,” he says, blocking my way. “No evil here.”
“I got to go, Barkley. Get in some sun and sea before my shifts starts.” Maybe take a pill.
“Don’t be late for your shift.”
“Yup. Don’t be late,” I repeat. “Who put you in charge?”
He laughs. “You know I could be.”
“Hey,” I laugh, too, because I want to get out of here. “What stuff are you using?”
“None. Ever.” He has this psycho salesman grin on his face. I bought these pills from him and somehow transferred power from myself to him.
“Ever think what a strange word ‘good’ is, Max?”
I feel caught in an undertow, unable to stand straight. I’ve got to go. I can’t stay here with him.
“Is it only an absence of evil, Max?”
“Haven’t thought much about it.”
“Do you ever think about grammar?” he asks.
“Am I going to be tested?”
“I’m just trying to be helpful, just trying to be friends.”
He lets out a breath that could topple you. Off the horizon clouds gather, maybe the first hint that a storm to break this damn heat is on the way.
“You’re going to miss seeing me every day, Max.” He slips back on his ridiculous mirrored sunglasses. “You’re going to miss Barkley helping you out. But we’ll stay friends, right? I have what you need.”
I look right into the sun. My irises burn. “Maybe I’ll go for a swim. Maybe, today, you should go for a swim, too?”
“I don’t swim, Max.”
I wish he would stop saying my name—first or last. I sling my backpack over my shoulder, duck past him, and spot her again: the girl with the curves. She’s in the ocean. Her back is broad and strong. Her hair cascades down past her hips. The ends of her hair dip into the sea. Her little sister skips out to her. They are hand in hand. Now Barkley slips off his sunglasses and looks to where I am looking. My head pounds. I really need a swim before I start my shift. I want to run along the shoreline toward her. Dive in right there, into the biggest swells. I should warn her about Barkley being trained on her, though I’m staring at her, too, so maybe there’s something wrong with me. Maybe I shouldn’t be looking at her. I don’t know her. I have other places to be, don’t I? I have to keep focused on—on what? The future? The day ending, that’s all I care about. The weekend ending. Work ending. I care about endings, not beginnings. I don’t need to start anything up with any girl on the last days of the summer when the wind will pick up, when the beaches will empty, when all this will be forgotten, or never remembered, not even that last sight of her. I keep on following her as if I need that last sight. But I don’t go after her. There’s no reason to, is there? So Barkley and I, we just stand outside the men’s room, until she disappears, diving headlong into the highest wave.
Claire
Saturday, 12:15 P.M.
I plunge beneath a wave. I can’t catch my breath or see anything in the muck. Seaweed, or a jellyfish, slides coldly across my arm. The ocean floor is swept from under me. All I can think of is how my father finally reached me and let me know that there is absolutely no more money for the rehabilitation center, but he was trying to work it out. He spent all night there at some special training. He said he’d explain later. I can handle this wave. I know the sea.
But I don’t know what this all means about my mother—and in the waters, I lose Izzy’s hand. I reach for it. I’m lost in the spray and the undercurrent pulling me out to sea, gasping for breath, my mouth full of saltwater and sand, and Izzy!
The wave rushes out to sea.
Behind me, sprawled in the surf is Izzy. She’s tossing her head, digging her hands into the sand, and loving the waves’ crest over her legs. She reaches for me, and I lift her up into my arms.
“I’m a mermaid,” she says, a strand of seaweed wound about her leg.
“We should get out. Take a break.”
“No,” she cries. She stays in my arms.
We’ve been in the water for at least two hours, the wind rising and the waves growing rougher.
I know I shouldn’t be here. I didn’t tell my father that I was taking Izzy to the beach even when I could have on the phone call. But why ask when I know what the answer will be? A distracted, angry, don’t-you-ever-listen-to-me no. And the true answer is: I don’t have to listen to him anymore or even lie and feel guilty for the lie. I can do what I want. I don’t have to be scared of the beach when the things to fear, to be really scared of, aren’t outside, aren’t here in the water, or atop a mountain even, but in ourselves: a tremor, a headache, a morning when smells or sounds are unfamiliar in the most ordinary and familiar of places.
I lay Izzy on our blanket. We’re isolated, out by the edge of the dunes, which is how I like it. We haven’t had two straight days at the beach all summer. And it’s one of those days you think will last forever. That you want to last forever. Why can’t there be more days like this?
“Let’s rest,” I say, though I don’t sit beside her. I stretch my arms toward the sky, then toward the sea. She jumps up and copies me. I breathe in the sea, deep into my chest. So does she. I dig my toes into the wet sand at the edge of the tide. So does she.
A wave rushes in and out to sea, molding our feet into the sand.
I want to go back into the sea. Alone. I want to swim by myself like I used to when I was on the swim team, butterfly division, fast and sure. I want to swim like a butterfly. Swim and fly. Izzy looks ready to rest for a while. Her eyes droop. I cover her with a towel to shield her from the sun. She’ll be fine for a few minutes.
“You sit down and wait for me right there,” I say to her. “Don’t go anywhere. Wait for me right here. I’ll be five minutes, or less.” Five minutes without tethers to Izzy.
“Five minutes,” she says, holding up her hand.
“That’s all.”
“Okay, five minutes,” she says, seriously.
“First, let me put more sunscreen on you.” I spray her down, tickle under her arms, make sure her shoulders and the small of her back are protected, too, place her in the middle of the towel, and make sure she promises to sit right there and wait for me.
Then I run toward the sea, crash through the waves. Most girls I know don’t like the ocean. They love
the beach, not the water. The ocean whips your hair, leaves sand in the roots, ruins your makeup, and is oblivious to how good-looking you are or are not. Those girls are anchored to their towels. Those girls are moored near the lifeguard, half a beach away. I don’t understand those girls and never have. But that’s okay. I’ve always been invisible to them.
The sea is mine.
On shore, Izzy is shouting, or maybe she’s singing to herself again. I can’t hear her, only the roar of the ocean and the beat of the tide. My ears fill with water. I shake my head left then right, making it worse. She’s waving her hands over her head. Her bathing suit drips from her slim shoulders. The pink stars on her flat front bounce. Her curls spring around her face. She’s fine. I shout back to her, “I’ll be right out,” but before I can raise my arms I’m hit by a wave, a big one.
The roar of the ocean, of my heart, drowns out all. Yet I swim to the surface; I’m okay. Izzy’s shouting, but I can’t hear her. I aim to swim to her. She is my focal point on the shore, a hundred or so yards away, to the left of the rocks. But another wave strikes, hard like a bullet, crashing crest and foam, churning ice cold, flinging me to the ocean floor. This time, I can’t find my footing at all. I’m tossed down, scraped along the bottom. I twist. My legs are pulled one way, my arms another. I need air. I need to get back to Izzy. Izzy! I try to swim to the surface. I can’t push against the current. I have an irrational thought: My mother is swimming toward me. She will save me. My eyes burn. Blackness. Another wave strikes. I open my mouth to protest, to scream, and saltwater rushes in. I’m swallowing the sea. I choke, gasp, gag, strain for light, and plead for air.
Max
Saturday, 12:18 P.M.
Barkley finally leaves me, and I am alone down near the dunes and the water, deciding that I will take one perfect pill and swim. I’ll float on the pill—and on the sea. I’ll swim alone for fifteen minutes or so. The sun blisters the top of my head. All the summer light refracts off the sand in a haze.
Before My Eyes Page 10